naperlou, I've tried increasing the font size in my browser, but on lots of web pages that are designed for wide monitors, that makes half of what I'm trying to read inaccessible, especially on a laptop.

Regarding prices, the whole economics of volume manufacturing means that per-unit costs are a lot higher with a small number of initial products than they are later when volumes have risen and manufacturers can amortize parts, labor and overhead. So manufacturers don't have a choice to lower prices initially without risking going out of business before volumes go up. They also don't have such a choice if they are funded by venture capital, which always comes with some pretty strict strings attached.

Ann, it sounds like there is some kind of optical device in the image path, something like the opposite of an image stabalizer, that selects one of two paths thru the optics? Is this correct? Any other details available?

Alex, you could just try a bigger font in your browser. As for your observation on the cost coming down bringing more applications, that is the one truism of the electronics age. Sometimes I wonder at manufacturers that price their products high at the begining to recover cost quickly while also raising venture capital. They would be better off pricing low from the begining to get volumes up quickly.

I didn't realize that eye fatigue was an issue with microscopes, though I guess it should be obvious since it is when reading web sites. On the technical side, it's interesting how CCD and other pieces of critical imaging technology (i.e., where the image is captured/light converted to intensity and color levels etc) is becoming, well, not exactly commoditized, but more affordable. And that's moving it out into a wider range of applications, as we're seeing with the explosion of 3D machine vision.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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